Under the patronage of the Federal Minister of Finance, the FFIP innovation program of Ekipa GmbH called on researchers, young professionals, students and start-ups to develop new approaches or apply existing solutions in five innovation challenges in order to help shape the future of finance.
Students from the Strategic Information Management (SIM) and Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics (AIDA) degree programs took up this challenge, accompanied by theoretical impulses, practical workshops in the areas of design thinking and pitching as well as team coaching: They developed different solutions for the challenges provided as part of the "Business Value Creation with IT" course offered by Prof. Dr. Andy Weeger in the summer semester of 2023. The participating companies selected the most promising approaches from the concepts submitted and developed them further together with the students as part of a boot camp.
HNU team impresses with AI chatbot for building society
Two HNU students were given the opportunity to further develop and pitch their idea beyond the lecture together with the participating company. With an AI chatbot, the "Unicorn Makers" team (Christian Gawlitza and Christine Kuck) developed an IT-based solution for building and maintaining lasting and long-term customer relationships with the help of digital innovations for BHW Bausparkasse AG. The concept was convincing: the team came second in the competition and won prize money of 1,000 euros.
"Taking part in the FFIP was a great experience for us, where we learned a lot: from developing a proposed solution to working with a company and pitching our idea," Christian Gawlitza and Christine Kuck summed up. "We would like to take this opportunity to thank Prof. Dr. Andy Weeger, who introduced us to the challenges and motivated us to take part in the program. A big thank you also goes to Ekipa and BHW for organizing the program and the great cooperation."
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Prof. Dr. Andy Weeger
